Summer Days Far Apart

Two Summer Days

Shinjuku station, it’s been a long time. Maybe, it’s because business has been dead for ten years; things don’t seem so different. As before, the colors are concrete and business suit gray while the motions are crowd sway and pigeon strut. At the end of the platform, Jake shuffles as slow as molasses, for the passengers going down the stairs create a wall of polyester. At the bottom of the stairs he turns right and, a few steps later, again right. He climbs the next flight up to the Yamanote, the great circle track of Tokyo. His destination is the next stop, Shin-Okubo.

Going up the stairs, he hears a train rumbling to a stop. Aware it’s going in his direction, he hurries up to avoid getting trapped on the stairs by the crowd coming out. He makes it and steps aboard through the nearest door. The air conditioning is a welcome relief from the muggy air of a summer afternoon. He doesn’t bother to look for a seat, instead he gazes out at the once familiar city, reminiscing with a blank stare.

In three minutes the train rushes into Shin-Okubo and squeals to a stop. The doors part and his legs pull him out. He pauses long enough for the doors to close and the green cars of the Yamanote to move on. One part of him would rather go back to Shinjuku, but at the moment, there is no train on the other side. His legs pull him once again, and he goes down the stairs for the turnstile.

At the bottom of the stairs he sees the man at the gate hasn’t yet been replaced by a machine as they have at the larger stations. Perhaps, that’s the champagne that launches an old memory.

It was a rainy day in summers ago, his first visit to this station, he was wearing bell-bottom jeans and a red aloha shirt. On the sidewalk, under the overhead tracks, just outside the exit, she was waiting for him with an oiled red paper umbrella. He’d only seen that kind of umbrella in samurai dramas, yet here was a teenage girl in a t-shirt, a denim miniskirt, and high heel sandals. The contrast was delightful. She opened the umbrella, handed it to him, and hugged his arm as they forsook the shelter. They leaned into each other and he remembers her skin was cold.

Jake looks down to hide his face and closes his eyes. He swears he can clearly hear the sound of rain spattering on oiled paper, yet he doesn’t recall a single word they spoke. He smiles, files away the memory, and follows the ghosts of summers past. His step is bouncy as it follows the wispy trail ofa frail memory. The stores are different, though still the same; wares and signs have changed, the architecture has not. He’s looking for a particular street, worrying a little that he won’t recognize it, but he does and turns.

Small apartment buildings, their doors and windows facing the street, and love hotels, their names on vertical signs, line the gray asphalt lane; just wide enough for one car. Everything about this street is rectangular except for the trees, their leaves providing shelter for the screaming cicadas. There’s the love hotel with two open gates, one of which she dragged him through to get him out of the way of an approaching car. That wasn’t how the driver and his two female companions in the rear seat saw it for they laughed as they followed the scene out the back window.

The street isn’t long, maybe two hundred meters, before it ends at a T. Second from the corner stands the familiar two story building. A few steps to the left and it comes into view. In good repair, the only thing that has changed is the perimeter wall; a rusty barbed wire has been added on top. He thinks: it’s because evil has become more brazen. Even the door nearest to the street matches his memories. Behind that door, inside that apartment, he spent one year, the first of three spent together before the end of naive youth cleaved them apart.

Eighteen she was and four years younger than he. She had colored her life with love and adventure while his world was a canvas of numbers within empty spaces. So, he had followed her here from across the sea, hoping with her help he could begin to paint.

In his mind a curvaceous bottle is flipped over. Memories pour through like sand.

My Japanese friend rushes into the shop from his table of puka shell necklaces outside. Blowing kisses into the air, he shouts, “Jake! You lucky guy. You got a date with a wow-wee chick.”

Heads turn, adding chuckles. I plunk the ice cream scooper into its water container. “What are you talking about, Masa?”

“She say she wants you. You gotta meet her tonight.”

I wait for the catcalls to die down. “Whaddya mean... I gotta?”

“Please, I promised her. She’s gonna buy three necklaces.”

Ah, I’m beginning to get the picture. He doesn’t need to worry. I’m hooked, but I’m not letting him reel me in so easily. “I don’t know. It sounds weird. Besides, I’m broke and I haven't got any wheels.”

“Don’t worry. She’s rich. She pay for you, man! We use my car. I drive you both anywhere.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s gone. But, she gave me her room number at the P.K. We can go there tomorrow morning.”

I stop fighting. “She better not be ugly.”

Masa assures me, “No way, Jose,” and goes back to his table. I turn back to the ice cream counter and smiles greet me from the faces of the waiting customers.

The next morning my name, shouted in a cheerful voice, wakes me. I roll off the couch and step out into the second floor lanai. Masa stands beside his beat up Datsun Sunny, a smile in a deeply tanned face dazzles me. He laughs and calls, “Come on. Let’s go.”

His enthusiasm sparks the same in me, and soon we are on our way to the Princess Kaiulani. The drive there, so early on Saturday, takes little time. We turn off the street and drive to the back of the hotel.

She’s short with shoulder length wavy black hair. Wearing tight jeans and a silk t-shirt, her eyes are hidden behind big round sunglasses that conjure an image of a dragon fly. Wearing large wooden clogs, she gingerly steps down to the pavement. She should be nervous getting into a car with two strangers in a foreign country, but she gets into the back seat with the coolness of a taxi customer.

Masa laughs and introduces us, “Jake, this is Mayumi.”

Mayumi replies in Japanese with a friendly smile, “Yoroshiku, Jake-san. Hajimemashite.”

I’m not fluent, but the answer is routine, “Kochirakoso.”

As Masa puts the car into first gear, he says, “Hanauma Bay. Here we come.”

I think he sometimes gets his English from the movies.

Masa explains that Hanauma Bay is inside the crater of an extinct volcano with steep walls that hinder cooling winds from entering. Doubtless, because of its natural beauty, engineers built the road to the top of the hill instead of around it.

An hour later, cresting that hill, we drive through the park filled with leafy trees, stop in the shade and get out. We walk to the edge of the cliff and I watch for Mayumi’s reaction. She coos. Straight down is a sapphire lagoon with gentle waves entering the broken wall of a crater before foaming over a reef. It can leave you dizzy and feeling small.

We proceed slowly down the zigzagging stairs. I sense the hill talking to me, telling me to let it be. Maybe, it’s the sense of merging with something much bigger than myself, but my chest feels too small; there’s something in me that wants out. What happens next is inevitable. We get to the bottom and sink our sandals into white sand, and my heart is barrel-rolling above the clouds.

The heat rising off the sand embraces me like a long lost friend. Almost at the water’s edge, just before the beach slants down, I lay down the thin straw mats on the last feet of soft sand. Here, waves murmur to us in an ancient tongue. I sit and watch as Mayumi greets the cooling water with her feet. Shifting my gaze to the volcanic walls of the bay surrounding us, I feel we are cupped in protective hands.

She returns and sits beside me. “It’s a number one place. Thank you.”

I ask, “Are you wearing a swim suit under your clothes?” She nods still looking out to sea. My voice cajoles, “Let’s go in.”

Taking off her sunglasses, she lifts her blouse over her head. She hasn’t any make-up on which accentuates her youth. Next, she unbuttons her jeans and lowers the zipper. She leans back, lifts her hips, and jerks the jeans off.
Tossing her shades, she stands, and offers her hand.

Next year he offers his forever. She takes it, but it doesn’t last. One night she gets a call from her kid sister telling her their mother is hospitalized. She asks Jake if she can go home. He hands her the bank book.

A few days later, they’re at the airport. Mayumi goes through the final gate and turns around. “Can I really go? I won’t go if you don’t want me to.”

“We spent our savings on that ticket. Of course, you can go.”

Mayumi gives a small smile, waves, and goes away never to return.

The soft crunch of rubber tires on old asphalt intrudes. The bottle is flipped over once again.

The air is stifling and the cicadas are screaming. The shirt is white with a ropy tie. The pants are black and creased. The face is pale and lined. Jake walks past the building with a smile, thinking he’s glad he came here. He knows for sure now that time has kept the good memories and smothered the pain. At the junction, he looks back. A young couple comes out the door. He blinks and they’re gone.